Shares of Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) were up on Wall Street this morning as the company got a rare double dose of good news: Regulatory approval for the next generation of its Promus drug-eluting stent for small blood vessels and a ratings upgrade from investment bank Goldman Sachs.
The Natick, Mass.-based medical device maker said FDA regulators approved its Promus everolimus-eluting coronary stent for use in vessels as small as 2.25mm in diameter. The company said it plans to immediately launch the product in the U.S.
The stent is designed for use in patients with small blood vessels, who account for about 10 percent of percutaneous coronary interventions, according to the company. The Promus stent is a private-label version of the Xience V everolimus-eluting stent made by Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT), which is distributed by BSX in the U.S. and Japan.
In the Spirit clinical trials conducted by Abbott, the stent showed a “very low late late loss (a measure of vessel re-narrowing) of 0.20 mm and a target lesion failure rate of 8.1 percent,” according to the Illinois-based company, which announced the FDA win yesterday.
In addition to the regulatory win, Goldman Sachs upgraded BSX stock from “sell” to “neutral” and raised its price target from $6.50 to $7.00. The bank said it no longer sees “material downside to consensus estimates.”
BSX shares were up 3.5 percent in early-morning trading to $6.91, with heavy volume. The stock took a beating after CEO Ray Elliott announced that he will retire at the end of 2011. On May 10, the day of Elliot’s announcement, Boston Scientific shares were trading at $7.76; they’d dropped all the way to $6.57 by the close of the market May 23.